The Art of Effective Dreaming E-Book

Gillian Polack

• Herausgeber: Next Chapter
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

Fay invented a world of fantasy where she could dwell in happiness. Her friends in this perfect world were Belle and Persa, Enlai and Flor. She visited them on the edge of sleep, shaping their lives to suit herself.

"I dream better than other people. More efficiently and effectively," she explained to herself. Her dreams were a flicker away from reality.

After Gilbert turns up in her refuge, undesigned, unheralded, and disturbing, Fay's dream world shatters. But are her dreams really dreams, and should she leave her friends behind and live in the real world?

Leseprobe

THE ART OF EFFECTIVE DREAMING

ENCHANTED AUSTRALIA BOOK 3

GILLIAN POLACK

CONTENTS

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Acknowledgments

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About the Author

Copyright (C) 2021 Gillian Polack

Layout design and Copyright (C) 2021 by Next Chapter

Published 2021 by Next Chapter

Edited by Tamara Mazzei & Stephen Ormsby

Cover art by CoverMint

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the author’s permission.

To the wonderful folk people who continue to enrich my life, but especially to Folk Dance Canberra.

PROLOGUE

Fay’s Saturday afternoon was made up of two car chases, one romantic idyll, a bag of flour, two litres of milk, sliced cheese on toast on an exotic island in the middle of the Caribbean, a loaf of bread, a lettuce, six tomatoes, a distant dream of flying into a silent night, and a tired argument with the girl who checked out the groceries. This girl was far too awake for her own good and wore a label saying “Hi, I’m…” Fay wanted to dream about that strange lack of name, but no-one should be that alert, so she simply paid for her goods and walked home.

Her slow stroll home included another car chase, not noticing the red lights and almost getting run over, a careful mental exercise where she pictured her dream hero, then at least six scenarios where she could be carried off by him. A block from home she decided that she was a modern woman and modern women don’t get carried off by anyone. He could carry her groceries, though. They were too heavy. They grounded her and she hated them for it.

She left her bags and her dreams on the kitchen floor and grabbed a piece of paper. Fay scribbled madly until she had cleared her mind.

CHAPTERONE

Everyday life is dull. No, that’s wrong. Everyday life is drearily, drably, impossibly dull.

You know, it’s made up of all those flat details realist novelists love to write about, and that sicken me to read. I try not to think about those bits of life. Enough to have to go to the toilet without having to write about it in agonising detail. Sure, I brush my teeth, but why recall it as something important? Why dignify it with reams of prose then claim to be doing something literary? Something boring, I call it. Something drab.

School was dreary, except for English. University was fun… while it lasted. And I spent those years feeling guilty at studying my fantasies. Why didn’t I do something useful like Law? Then I could have been paid a great deal more to be bored than I am being paid now. Even Catch-up Economics wasn’t enough to make up for a missed legal career.

See, life’s not only boring, it’s full of wrong decisions. I was a wrong decision, for a start. My parents should have had a boy. Or I should have been an orphan. I dreamed of that, years ago. One of those times I was sitting in my room, thinking, “Isn’t family supposed to be friendlier?” Too many TV shows. Too many pretend-happy families.

So of course I dreamed that I had been adopted and that someone, some day would discover me and whisk me to a romantic lifestyle. Shared rooms. Secret laughter and jokes. A little world that was my family. Only one thing went wrong. My life’s a mess. And all because, when I was nine, I looked like my brother and sister.

You can’t really blame me for trying to escape my world, can you? Actually, I’ve never worked out why everyone else doesn’t seem to want to. Maybe they dream less. Or maybe my dreams are only noticeable to me.

Maybe, maybe, maybe. I don’t believe in these maybes. I think that I just dream better than other people. What’s the current jargon? More efficiently and effectively.

The art of effective dreaming.

Sometimes my dreams are so life-like they’re a flicker away from reality. The other day I could just about see what’s-his-name giving me the green cloak. I was so astonished I stepped back awkwardly and tumbled. I can’t even remember why the green cloak was so important, or even which what’s-his-name it was. For the flicker of reality, he was shorter than my average hero, and that’s all I could tell. His context wisped away with the dream.

One day a hero will break through to my world, and I’ll be less lonely. Less bored.

One day. One day I’ll be able to throw away my Public Service approved footrest (for Public Servants with short legs who use keyboards a lot) and be with someone. I don’t know what I’ll do when this all happens. I’m not much of a doer. I like watching events, and talking them out. I’m not desperately into fast action and play. Sad, that.

I have a lovely little cove in my fantasy land, with a quiet cave. They are mine. When the world gets too much for me, I stand by the seashore and watch the waves. The cry of the seagulls keeps me company, and the gentle hush of the ocean. Sometimes I paddle, but I never swim. I don’t dare go past the ledge that drops down suddenly, some metres out. The pull is stronger there. The sea is dangerous outside the protected headland of my quiet, golden cove. There are a few bushes and plants and some shells, but I’ve never identified them. I’ve played with pebbles, and even the occasional shell. Mostly I sit there and find my peace.

Sometimes I sit there at night, and watch the stars. A few times I’ve slept in the cave. That’s when I really needed the peace. I use the cave when even going to sleep in the real world is too much.

Little things mean a lot in the cove, and none of them are dreary. They are all charged with huge significance, and it’s not a pretentious type of meaning that needs words and signs and signifiers and people telling you that something you have known all your life means something quite different. Meaning comes straight from the heart, in my little cove. It bypasses the brain entirely.

I don’t even need a brain there, or to be competent at anything. I just am. I don’t even have to like myself. I just have to be.

Fay was listening to the speaker.

To be more precise, Fay was attempting to listen to the speaker. The chair was deep and comfortable, and the table was at just the right height to tempt her into crossing her arms and falling straight to sleep. She was doodling to help herself stay awake. She started doodling structures that reflected the economics the guy was droning on about. They were pretty puerile structures, she reflected.

In fact, he was really a very boring speaker. The most interesting thing about him was that his voice rasped and was in dissonance with his face. “In dissonance with his face” she wrote under a doodle, to emphasise the thought. He had a friendly, slightly droopy face that looked a little sly on the odd occasion. Odd, she thought. That’s the word. She’d always thought that only fox-faced men could look sly. You know, the smooth, sleek, reddish-dark men, who are slightly intense and know exactly what they are doing.

Alberc was one of them. Foxy. Not female foxy, but male. Cunning and bright-eyed, and out to get certain results. These days he was a bit faded from his younger red-black self, having grown in age and prosperity. Alberc Bas had the paunch that a mayor must, and owned the big white house next to the market square.

Fay’s doodles stopped reflecting the outer world and started reflecting the inner, as she lost touch with the speaker entirely. She sketched one of the animal figures on the second floor of the house, standing out in white relief from the white plaster stucco that faced the main street. Her hand wobbled, and the graceful figure turned into a gargoyle, so she drew crenellations around it and it slowly became the castle.

This was the first time she had drawn the castle, though it had been a part of her world for a long time. It was spoken of in the village, the doings of great interest to everyone. Whenever Fay wanted a good gossip she invented tales about the castle staff, who were inherited retainers, or related to the villagers, or a mixture of both. Some of them were the younger siblings of farmers. In fact, until the gargoyle appeared by mistake, the building had been a gracious manor house in her mind, almost Edwardian in character. She had used its grounds for tea parties and picnics. Now it turned out to be unashamedly older and more important, though perhaps in need of some money spent on the battlements. A castle. Fortified and slightly crumbling. Like my mind, Fay thought.

The town was more recent than the castle, for it was no walled town, and had no protective covering of its own. This surprised Fay. That made the castle older, perhaps ancient. She looked at her sketch of the west wall in pleased wonder. It was so nice when invention carried you into new knowledge.

She frowned at the gargoyle, her mind taking a sudden turn. It might be that the castle is absolutely dead ancient, she thought, In fact, it probably is, but that doesn’t take away from the sad fact that I cannot draw the stucco falcon and hare on the merchant’s house. Sorry, on the mayor’s house. I need drawing lessons. Betty got them – it isn’t fair. Her mind dwelled on the inequities of childhood.

A rustle distracted her, and she saw that the speaker had finished, and everyone else was shuffling out of the room. Her papers piled randomly, with the gargoyle on the top. Fay left also. She packed her desk up slowly, whispering “clean desk policy” as if they were a mantra to dispel the mood of the working day.

Visiting economists were useful because the day finished much faster. It finished much faster because Fay dreamed all the way through their talks. Even when she had to take notes and report on it, as she would in the morning, she somehow stayed conscious for just enough of it to do so. Her heart was reaching out to her fantasy land, however, and she could not wait to be on her way home.

The way home and to work, and taking a shower, and cooking, and ironing - these were the best times for dreaming. The best time of all, however, was just before sleep, because then, if she was lucky, a real dream would take up where her day-dream left off, and paint her little world in bright, bright colours. Her daydreams, strangely enough, were in black and white, like her sketches. All the colour came from that mystical moment between sleeping and waking. The green cloak came then, and the importance of putting it on.

During the day, it hovered near. It was at night that Fay remembered its significance. But she could only visualise it in her mind’s eye during the day. Deep down inside her was a half-expressed wish - and unexpressed fear - that one day she would remember the imperatives of the night. That her dreams would become reality. One day.

Until then, she kept on dreaming, happy, scatty, and thinking her life a great bore. Sometimes, she even believed she only dreamed to while away the time.

So why did she take the west wall of the castle home with her, and ponder it all through the half hour walk? Why did she sit down after dinner, with fresh charcoal and paper and sketch until her hands were black and her face smudged? And why was the result of the sketch a falcon, poised over a fuzzy and somewhat obscure animal? And why, when she went to bed, did she immediately imagine herself knocking at the door of the merchant’s house and asking to see Belle?

CHAPTERTWO

The trees they do grow high,

And the leaves they are so green;

But the day is past and gone, sweetheart,

That you and I have seen.

“It’s a cold winter’s night,

And I must abide alone:

He is young but a daily growing.

“O Father, Father dear,

Great wrong to me you’ve done,

For you’ve married me to a boy who is too young,

For I am twice twelve and he is but fourteen”

He is young but a daily growing.

“O Daughter, Daughter dear,

If better be and fit

We will send him to the Court awhile to point his pretty wit”

To let the lovely ladies know they may not touch and taste

I will bind a bunch of ribbons red

About his pretty waist

At the age of fourteen,

He was a married man,

And at the age of fifteen,

The father of a son,

And at the age of sixteen,

His grave it was a green,

And that did put an end to his growing. (Traditional)

The door needed oiling, Fay noticed. It always needed oiling. It didn’t matter how important Alberc grew, and how he made his daughters dress up and show themselves off, he never could remember to have the door oiled.

Or maybe it was Bellezour’s fault. Since the death of her mother five years earlier, she had been responsible for the running of the house. Fay could well imagine it was Belle’s fault. Hinges never got on her nerves. Belle had admitted, time and again, that she was never upset by old houses and their noises. It felt homey, she claimed, her long eyes crinkled with amusement, and ghosts could be friends as much as any other being could. Sometimes Fay doubted her friend’s sense, although it was a huge advantage to Fay herself to be accepted by the leading family in the village.

Town, not village, she corrected herself, silently. They never call it a village. Not with a common, and a square, with a church and a castle. People were so touchy, she grinned, as she patiently waited for a servant to answer the door. It was a slow household at the best of times.

Would Belle mind if she went straight in? Fay doubted it, so she carefully lifted the latch and pushed. It was a heavy door. Was it made of oak? Fay wasn’t much good at identifying wood. It was heavy, anyway, and the most wonderful reddish colour, and carved with whimsical figures. That was Belle’s mother’s doing. She had been very fond of whimsical figures, apparently. Fay had never known her. It was soft to the touch, but then, wood always was. Or was it? Fay was in a mood for doubting today. She would start doubting her own name if she wasn’t careful. Fay set the door gently closed and walked into the cool hallway. She listened.

There was the sound of argument upstairs. It was very unlike Belle to lift her voice (a soft and restless creature, Bellezour Anma), but it was certainly her voice. Fay was tempted to leave,. The ignoble side of her nature got the better of her.

She walked up the stairs, slowly, clutching the banister. The clutching was a reminder that while she was in the house, in fact while she was in this world at all, she should give herself wholly to being there. It did not matter that she had devised the scene beforehand: they were real people. The banister was a real banister. That was one of her reminders. Like being surprised at Belle’s distress.

As she reached the top of the stairs, a door slammed. Fay walked towards Belle’s room, oddly hesitant. A gentle sobbing was now the only noise. Fay knocked.

A tear-stained Bellezour Anma opened the door, her face flushed and unhappy. She sniffed and gave a weak smile. “I’m glad you came,” she said, enveloping Fay in a warm hug. “I was just wishing I had a shoulder to cry on.”

Fay refrained from saying that it looked as if Belle had been doing the crying quite thoroughly without the assistance of a stray shoulder. She gently disentangled herself from her friend and sat down, looking quizzical.

Bellezour laughed a little embarrassed laugh, and also sat down. There was an awkward silence for a moment. Fay was not going to break it. She was here in her capacity as observer of romance, not a participant, and she would not give way. This was, in a way, her quiet revenge for the house turning into the castle wall, during that lecture.

Finally, “I’m getting married,” Bellezour announced.

Fay couldn’t help herself. “You aren’t,” she said, her voice full of all the warmth suitable to such a pronouncement. It was her mother’s training coming out, she reflected. There are some announcements you always react to in a certain way. “Who to?” She posed the obligatory question. Then she started regretting her enthusiasm, and let some doubt creep in. “But why are you crying then? Doesn’t your father approve?”

This set off a whole new stream of tears. When the storm had finally abated, Bellezour explained, but not very coherently. It was an arranged marriage, and father and daughter had just had a head-splitting argument over it. “He’s too young,” Belle explained, “I’m twice twelve,” (Fay had to stop and do some arithmetic here - never her strong point.) “And he is but fourteen.”

“He is young, but he’s daily growing,” finished Fay, sardonically.

“Whatever made you say that?” Belle asked.

“Why?”

“Well, it seems rather unlike you. You have spent two years scolding me for poetic language and for not being concrete and pragmatic. Besides, it sounds familiar.”

“I have?” Fay considered it and apologised. Even the words were hers - ‘concrete’ and ‘pragmatic’ were definitely not a part of Bellezour Anma’s vocabulary. “Oh, it’s just part of a song,” she finished, lamely.

“Get that out of your head right now!” Bellezour said. “We have had this discussion before. I am not part of any song. And I do not want to marry a fourteen year old, however handsome and well-connected, and I have no choice in the matter, and all you can tell me is that he’ll get older. Well, I’ll get older too, and I’ll be old and grey and our children will be as brothers and sisters to my husband. I’ll be nothing but a wizened old lady.” She burst into tears again.

Fay suddenly felt remorseful for her neglect. Even imaginary friends needed help. So she spent a slow hour reassuring the weeping damsel, and, by the time Bellezour was calm and philosophical about her fate, Fay was fast asleep with dreams erratic and strange.

When she woke in the morning, she felt as if she had cried all night, or had indeed seen a friend through a crisis. Her head was heavy and the sheets clean and tempting. Still she dragged herself out of bed and went to work, conveniently forgetting breakfast.

It did not help her mood any that all her colleagues took one look at her bloodshot eyes and dour face and assumed she was suffering a hangover. After the fourth person had, quite independently of the other three, teased her in what he felt was a gentle and subtle manner (sledgehammer subtle, Fay thought) she was angry and awake and altogether alive.

Munching carrots and drinking tea, that’s all my evenings consist of at the moment. Munching carrots and drinking tea. Not very exciting.

There is not a thing of interest on TV, and I’m too lazy to get out my flute, and I’m too bored even to draw. If I were a drinker, I would drink myself into smithereens. What’s a smithereen? And how do you drink yourself into it? All I know about them is that they are small and that there are lots of them. How do I know they are small? What if I drink myself into a single, giant smithereen?

The novelty of my lovely new home has worn off and I no longer feel tempted to do things to it. Technically speaking, I know it’s mine (well, the bits the bank doesn’t own) but personally speaking it doesn’t feel homey yet. I’ve had all my friends over to dinner and half my family to stay and I still look around wondering how on earth I can lay claim to it and make it mine.

I don’t quite belong here, I suppose, the way I don’t quite belong at work. I’m at home in bed - I feel quite real when I sleep. And when I’m singing in the shower. Only I start wishing the shower were a waterfall and I was bathing in a romantic gorge. Somehow all my excruciating modesty gets put to the side in my dreams. Oh, how nice is a dream world, where I am not traumatised by all my hang-ups and limitations. Where I don’t stop playing in an orchestra because people might (God forbid) actually hear me.

How much of my fading away is my own doing? Is the world so unbearable? Or am I just terrified of it? Serves the world right if I’m terrified. It just doesn’t know what it’s missing. The richness of my dreams, hidden forever under a veil of security. Scribbles are the only real communication I have with the world, and only I get to see them. This is as it should be. Like my solitary flute playing. The inner universe is my audience, not the outer world. The inner universe and the schoolbook I scribble in.

Oh, but I’m full of cute sayings tonight.

An empty, tidy house does wonders for the ideas, rattling about like stray peas. What was it a friend once said about another friend? That the thoughts in her head were like two peas inside her skull, rattling around in the empty space. Some friend. But that’s me in my house, with the big eucalypts standing between this empty brainbox and a big boring world.

Am I a neurotic? A manic depressive? Who knows? The words sound good. All I know is it’s early to bed tonight. I want to find out what’s happening to Belle. I really had no idea she’d be so terribly upset by her marriage. As her father told her, it means power and a secure position, and she was old to be unmarried. Yet all she could do was cry. Is that why I’m not married? Fear of an uneven match? Rubbish. I’m not married because I’m not prepared to sacrifice my dream world to anyone. You hear that, world? My dreams of knights in shining armour do me just fine!

“What on earth are you doing?” Fay asked.

“I’m sewing,” answered Bellezour Anma.

That was obvious, but Fay knew that Belle, for all her apparent frail femininity, hated sewing. She did beautiful work, but often admitted that she detested every stitch of it. So why now? Was she determined to prove her martyrdom or something?

Fay asked the question. Belle’s frown lifted and she laughed. She didn’t answer the question properly. Instead she said, “For my husband. He needs this,” and she waved her work in the air. Then she asked a question of her own. It surprised Fay, this query, so much that her jaw dropped and she took on her famous dumb dog look. At least, she assumed it was her famous dumb dog look. She certainly felt like a dumb dog. Her mouth gaped for a moment before she shut it with a snap, and tried, feebly, to answer.

“Your wedding?” was all the reply she could manage, in a numbed, wailing voice, “Your wedding?” her voice rose on the third syllable, “But I came today to ask you when you had planned to have it. I didn’t know you were already married.”

“In the spring,” Belle said, calmly biting off a thread.

“But, but why are you still here?” spluttered Fay.

“Here?” asked Belle, in confusion.

“In your father’s house,” prompted Fay, biblically. Belle looked around in confusion. Then she stopped herself and laughed.

“Fay, how could you walk right through the castle grounds, through the courtyard and up the turret stairs and not know where you are?”

It seemed she had forgiven the lapse over the wedding. Fay sighed in relief. Then Bellezour’s words registered. Fay whirled around and out the door, almost tripping in her haste. It was as well she had not tripped, for there was no wooden landing outside the door, but a stone ledge and below that ledge, a well of spiral stairs, leading round and down into dizzying darkness.

“This is my favourite room,” came Belle’s voice. “No-one likes the stairs except me, and I can see the whole town from up here.”

Fay gulped and turned around, back to the security of the room. “Let me see the view,” she asked, her voice cautious.

Sure enough, the turret window faced the town. Looking out, Fay drew deep breaths to steady her nerves. This scene, she thought, must be from her unconscious mind, (Subconscious mind? Do I even know what I’m thinking about, she wondered?) just like the castle wall that had appeared on paper the other day. All Fay had intended to do was visit Belle and talk about her plans for the wedding. Fay had intended to recommend colours and clothes, and generally help Belle face a changing future. And suddenly it was all in the past and Belle was in that future. So was Fay.

She was not going to destroy the fragile reality of the dream by shifting back three months. Doggedly she looked out the window. Still dogged – no escaping that today, Fay fretted.

She knew the town. After all, Fay reassured herself, she created it. But she had never seen it from on high. That was maybe where this scene came from: a secret desire to see what the village looked like, laid out like a map. Sorry, town. It didn’t make nearly as much sense to her as it should have, sitting there in the distance, like a model. She could identify the common and the pond. That was all.

Fay turned to the green and gold room and asked Bellezour to show her where everything was. Belle had a funny look in her eye - a little determined and curious - but she didn’t ask any obvious questions, such as where Fay had been these last months, and why she had been so stunned to see the tower stairs. She looked into her friend’s face solemnly, then smiled gently. Until she saw that smile, Fay had not realised how upset Belle had been at her negligence. It was like a spring flower showing how drab and plain the winter had been. Now she knew she was forgiven, but was not entirely certain what for. She had a feeling, somehow, that it was not for missing the wedding.

“Look,” Belle pointed, “there’s the green.”

“Well, yes, I worked that one out,” muttered Fay, ungratefully.

Bellezour chuckled at the sour tone. “To the right of the green you can see the shops. See, the large one is the inn, where the bench is.”

“The bench?” queried Fay, “You have the sight of an eagle.”

Belle laughed again. “Oh, I can’t see the bench, stupid. But I can see the row of old men sitting on it. Just as I can see the morris dancers on the green.”

Fay could just make out the streaks of brown and grey that must be these gentlemen. She couldn’t see the morris dancers at all.

“Then Persa’s house and Enlai’s and Flor’s must be over there,” she said, pointing to a row of buildings to the south of the green. While most of the shops had thatched roofs, some of the houses had jaunty red tiles instead, witness to the local pottery industry. Not pantiles, though. She had come across curved pantiles on a roof during a visit to the UK and they fascinated her, but they made no appearance in her town. Maybe another town, another day, another dream. A special pantile dream. What a strange thought: pantile dreaming where thoughts were curved and slotted into one another in neat protection.

“And there’s the church,” said Belle, pointing to the north of the green.

“Now why couldn’t I spot that?” asked Fay.

“Stupid, I guess,” answered her friend.

With her eyes, Fay followed the path leading from the church, past the pond, and to the gallows tree. It was at the very edge of the green, and was surrounded by a picket fence to keep the cows out. The whole scene was far enough away to resemble a miniature. Just past the giant tree was a street, leading to the church and the shops. That, at last, was the way it had seemed on the ground. From up here it was just a strip of white-ish grey, creating a blank space between the houses.

She knew that the ornamented two-story place was Alberc’s. The white stucco was visible, and the elaborate shape. By now she had her bearings and could see just past this mayoral residence (how grand the words sounded and how small the place looked from a distance) to the red-brick triangle of the market square. It seemed terribly tiny for a market square. On the far side of the square was the Assembly Hall - the town’s pride and joy. It was a new wooden building. No wattle and daub, no brick. The paint shone in the sunlight as if it were polished.

Fay didn’t even try to sort out the maze of houses round the public buildings. She knew where her friends lived - that was enough. She gave a huge sigh and decided that she felt sleepy. Time for bed.

“No,” cried Bellezour Anma. Her voice was unusually sharp and commanding. “Don’t fade on me.”

Fay rubbed her eyes. “But I’m tired,” she murmured, “I’ve had enough dreaming.”

“I don’t care,” said Belle, defiantly, “You wanted to know what I am doing, so you can spare the time to help me with it.”

“Oh,” said Fay, and obligingly sat down. She sat down on a pile of cushions, and slid over them in her sleepiness. As she hit the floor, Belle’s laugh rang out and Fay became uncomfortably aware of the room again. “Okay” she said, trying to retain her reasonableness, “What are you doing?”

“My husband is young, so we are sending him to court to get an education. These are his clothes.”

“Oh,” said Fay, again, intelligently, and helped her friend sew ribbon until the colours all merged in a kaleidoscope, and she was definitely and indubitably asleep. More effective than counting sheep, thought Fay, as she woke up the next morning, relaxed and contented in her own bed. Though it would have been nice to imagine the wedding.

It’s strange, to wake up so happy and to end so unhappy. I guess things were too nice and sweet early on, because by morningtea time I was all restless. Couldn’t sit still. Found photocopying to do, and filing, and everything else petty and small and full of movement. Couldn’t stay still. It was as if a wrongness deep inside impelled me to move, move, move and never to think. Couldn’t sit still, even a moment. All my real work suspended while time passed, passed, passed so slowly.

It wasn’t until I left work that I realised what was happening.

I was scared. My world has done something without me.

No, not true. As I sit here with my cup of tea, I know it’s not true. I’m just worried my world might be doing things without me. Not worried, petrified. So my subconscious was hard at work without my tender guidance, and made me miss the wedding. I see enough weddings in real life, and I reckon it would have been a little sad, anyway, to see a twenty-four year old friend marry a teenaged boy. I’m scared of the wedding, in a way. That’s why I skipped to when Belle was going to be alone again, almost single, the way I created her. That makes sense. It brings it back to ordinariness again. A manageable world.

But what if my world did get away from me? What if it was Bellezour who reached out last night and kept me awake a bit longer, and what if it wasn’t me? Does that mean that it could become just as deadly dull as reality?

I won’t see Belle tonight. No chances. I’ll take no chances. I’ll make up a quaint and funny imagining, something totally irrelevant and rather silly. I’ll tame the town I saw from the tower, and bring it back into perspective. Then maybe I can think safely about visiting old friends or getting involved in emotions or people again.

I’ll use a few of the people who sat outside the pub, I think. I don’t know them - I don’t know their names. It will be an easy imagining to do: like back in the days when I was a kid. And it won’t hurt me. It will be safe.

And I may not wake up happy, but tomorrow I’ll be able to cope with everyday life again. Please God, let me be able to cope with everyday life again.

CHAPTERTHREE

Fay wandered down to the pond, carefully averting her gaze from the castle whenever the streets twisted to give her a glimpse. She felt a bit aggrieved, because it really felt as if the streets were twisting on purpose, just to upset her. She ploughed doggedly on, delicately hopping over open drains, walking around animals or children as if they were lumps of stone or brick.

They meant as much to her as stone or brick. Fay preferred adults or inanimate objects. The first you could talk to and the second you could use. She hadn’t liked childhood, she reasoned, so why should she like children? It was completely an invention that all women loved children. Completely.

Eventually she skirted around the gallows tree. Her eyes hugged the ground as she went round it and she tried not to smell the rotting sweetness of the decayed meat. Obviously there was a crime problem in the town.

Fay decided that if ever she created a new town, she wouldn’t fall prey to romanticisation. There would be no gallows tree, or stocks or any form of punishment. There would be no crime and no punishment. With the thought, the scene wavered and grew almost transparent. Like a watercolour against the light.

Fay picked up a stick and whacked it against each upright of the fence around the tree. She went round and round the gallows tree, bashing with the stick until the world felt solid again. By that time she had quite a little crowd of children staring at her and pointing. She made a face and a threatening gesture and then sighed in relief when they drifted away.

Eventually she reached the pond where two men were fishing. Fay wondered who had the rights to fish the pond, since it was on common property. It seemed unlikely that the whole town could do so the way they had with their cows and sheep until recently. Alberc Bas had made the common land accessible on a rotation system only when he became mayor. It was no use to anyone bare and overused, or so he claimed.

Maybe the pond was on rotation too. Maybe it moved spots on a regular basis, or got swished around in its bed from time to time to meet Alberc’s ideas of town rule. A rotating pond wouldn’t move spots or swish around, Fay suddenly thought. It would have a little whirlpool at its heart. A ghost of a smile appeared on her face.

Anyway, there were two tattered old men fishing there with lines that looked very tangled. Fay wondered what special ability it took to get lines so tangled in a calm pond. Maybe that miniature whirlpool really existed? Fay shrugged her shoulders and took off her shoes so that she could slide down to the water’s edge.

Fay’s toes touched the water with a faint thrill of forbidden pleasure. For some reason she always remembered the camping trip she had been on as a child where she was not allowed to sit on the bank and let her feet drift. Fay defied her parents even when she dreamed. As her feet softened and became waterlogged by the water, Fay relaxed. The tattered old men stood there, scarecrow silent; good company. A pleasant way to spend an afternoon, Fay thought. Village noises seemed distant and even the mooing of a cow on the common sounded as if it came from the other side of the world.

Just when Fay was almost asleep, the whole scene woke up. Fay lifted her chin and looked around, wanting to know what all the movement and noise was about.

There were her two scarecrows gesticulating at each other wildly. Old and angry men, arms flying about, tempers raging. Before Fay’s fascinated gaze, another man joined them. He was younger, greying rather than greyed. He was very drunk and it showed in his voice and his movements.

“Wassa marrer?” he asked. The two fisherman explained first together then one at a time, interrupting each other and confusing the third party.

Fay leaned back and laughed. All three looked at her.

“What’re you cackling about?” the tallest asked, his voice high with age and aggression.

“You were both arguing over the fish. If you can’t work out who caught it, why don’t you share it?” Fay said practically. All three men looked at her suspiciously.

“Bloody fool,” one said and all three turned away. It looked so orchestrated, that Fay burst into helpless laughter again, silent this time. She did not want aged wrath to descend upon her. As she silently giggled, her feet plashing the water, the scene played itself out a few yards away.

The drunk offered to arbitrate and the other two accepted his authority with apparent equanimity. The fish was placed on the ground and the tipsy one stared at it for many minutes, deep in thought. Then “I have a solution,” he declared, in sonorous tones.

He picked up the fish and walked away. When the others chased him, he shouted over his shoulder, “If I take it, it’s the perfect solution.” Fay wondered if he was as drunk as he had seemed, because he certainly ran fast.

Relaxed and amused, Fay swung her feet out of the water. They were white and sodden and she looked at them in quiet delight. She waved them around for a minute, twisting and twirling her ankles until most of the water was gone. Then she put her shoes back on. Fay regarded her feet then, shod and sober, with a certain seriousness.

She then walked south, towards Persa Doucor’s house. It was a long time since she had seen Persa. Persa was not a serious person and perfectly fitted Fay’s silly mood. Small and round and bouncy, Persa was always getting caught up in some excitement or other, generally of her own making. This time she bowled Fay over in brown-haired enthusiasm.

“Fay, save me!” she shrieked. How such a high-pitched squeal could come from such a round face was always a puzzlement to Fay.

“What from?” she asked, sensibly.

In answer, Persa dragged her inside the house and plonked her down on the living room chair. “I just had to get inside without Enlai seeing me,” she explained.

“That’s why you shrieked?” Fay asked.

“Yes, I mean, no. I mean, I was hiding behind you.”

“But he could surely hear you.”

“Yes, but he wouldn’t dare follow when I was with you.”

“Follow?” Fay queried, her face wrinkling in bewilderment. “Persa, what mischief have you been up to now?”

“No mischief,” said Persa, her face as sober as it could be, which always made her look unlikely and angelic. It was a look Fay distrusted, and with reason. “It’s just that he was making eyes at me.”

“Persa, he’s known you all your life. Why should he make eyes at you now?”

“I don’t know,” replied the girl, “All I know is he teases me and looks at me just so, and then spends half his time with Flor.”

“Well,” Fay interjected reasonably, “he’s been interested in Flor for a long time.”

“Then why is he making eyes at me?” Persa demanded. “He should just marry Flor and be done with. That’s why I’m avoiding him.”

Some avoidance, Fay thought cynically.

“I’m saving myself up for the soldiers. If I can marry a soldier, I’ll get to go to court.”

Soldiers? This was new. Fay plunged in, trying to make sense of it. “What soldiers? Where? And why on earth would a soldier get you to court? And why do you want to go to court anyway?”

Persa giggled. Her giggle was low-pitched and feminine. “The soldiers from court, silly! They’ll go back there one day. It’s part of the new agreement. The prince will be here soon to govern until his lordship comes of age.”

“Tough on Belle.” Fay commented.

“Oh,” said Persa ingenuously, “I forgot you were friends. You should call her the lady Bellezour now. I do.”

“You,” said Fay, “I don’t believe you remember to call anyone anything polite for more than three minutes at a stretch.”

Persa squealed in horror and started attacking Fay with her mother’s beautifully embroidered furnishings. Fay defended herself manfully until a voice shouting, “Excuse me!” made them both stop in horrified awareness of their maidenly dignity. It was Enlai, looking very amused.

“Enlai Devers, what do you mean walking in here without so much as a by-your-leave and interrupting the quiet discussion between friends.”

“Yes, I saw how quiet it was,” Enlai commented, “In fact, I looked four times and said “Excuse me” so often my throat is hoarse.”

“Liar,” accused Persa.

“I never lie,” commented Enlai off-handedly.

“Liar,” answered Fay, and proceeded to back her accusation up. “What about the time when you told me you’d won a fortune in the lottery, and wanted some money to hide--”

“Okay, okay, so my throat isn’t hoarse,” Enlai interrupted quickly, throwing a horrified look at Persa. “But I did knock and very loudly too. I wanted to, to--”

“Now listen for his excuses,” commented Persa, drolly. “The truth is he just wanted to know what we were up to! He can’t bear to see me accosting someone on the street without knowing why.”

“I give up,” said Enlai. “What were you up to?”

“None of your business,” said Persa, pertly.

“Actually,” Fay explained, determined to see some order to this sudden conversation, “I was visiting Persa.”

“Were you?” Persa’s eyes were wide open at this.

Enlai laughed at them both. “And Persa was so enthusiastic to see you that she squeaked ‘Save me’ and dragged you indoors.”

“Why she squealed ‘Save me’ is none of your concern,” said Fay, sternly. Persa giggled. “But I was visiting Persa, and now that you have interrupted my visit in such a rude and untimely manner...”

“Go for it!” barracked Persa, softly.

“I’ll be on my way,” finished Fay. “I know when I’m not wanted.”

“I suppose I’d better leave, too,” said Enlai, “otherwise Persa will get me to clean up the mess you two idiots have made.”

As Persa showed them out the door, full of dignity and propriety, she had the cheek to whisper in Fay’s ear, “Now he’s making eyes at you.” From Enlai’s attentive manner when he insisted on walking her safely past the gallows, Fay could only agree.

God, nightmares can be awful. And nightmares created by stinking humid weather are the very worst. Partly this is because you don’t expect them. You go to bed all cheerful and zippy, and then you toss and turn for an eternity. I was trying to get out of a dreadful situation. I don’t remember what it was, but it made my heart beat fast and I wanted to hide my face in my hands. I kept thinking all through my nightmare, “Where is the green cloak? I need the green cloak!” It was as if the cloak had the ability to solve my problems. A sort of seven league cloak, perhaps, transporting instantly away from all the carnage. It wasn’t actually carnage, but it threatened to be, which was worse. It was blackmail and terrorism, and a terrible lack of logic.

I remember it. We all piled on this bus, my friends and I, and of course I caught it after running down tree-lined streets for miles and miles because the person I was going with was late and the bus couldn’t wait even though we had tickets and there wouldn’t be another. And then it took us to a Wild West entertainment park, where everyone took on cowboy roles. Except that something had gone wrong and no-one was allowed out of the park until they had killed another person. So all my friends were hunting each other and acting as if they were dropouts from Lord of the Flies, and I was going around saying, “Don’t believe it, you don’t have to kill anyone.”

And, like one does in dreams, I tried to magic my way out, and change the beginning and the middle and the ending. Only I kept coming back, standing outside the saloon trying to stop everyone from killing each other. All I could do, just before I woke up, was teleport from place to place, telling myself that it was only a dream and therefore I had to be able to find a solution. It’s only in real life we never find solutions. And I wanted the green cloak for just a fleeting instant, and that instant brought it back as a sort of reality to me.

I know a bit more about its significance now. It means safety. I wish I knew why, how, when or where. But if I’d have had the cloak in the dream, then my friends wouldn’t have had to go out so enthusiastically to kill each other. And I wouldn’t have been left in the remnants of a nightmare, like a bad headache colouring my day depressing.

What colour is depressing? It is a purple-black, bruise colour. Or is it red and angry? No, it’s not red, because anger dispels depression. Depression is not enough adrenalin, I reckon, and not working to face up to whatever is wrong. I’m never depressed except after nightmares. Mind you, I’m not very often angry either. There’s not a lot to get mad about. Anger implies some sort of close contact with the world, tactile reach, close caring.